Ickworth and Bury St Edmunds

On Sunday I had to go for a suit fitting in Bury St Edmunds and we decided that this was the ideal chance for us to go tick another [National Trust] place off the list (Ickworth this time). That and my internal voice was thinking that’s us getting our full membership worth of visits done, in less than 2 months.
The [National Trust] describe [Ickworth] as “A Georgian Italianate palace in an idyllic English landscape”. Indeed the gardens are quite beautiful and even though it was a bit windy it was a lovely day to walk around the gardens. There was even some bike race going on, we took a quick look at that and I think we were glad we weren’t taking part – looked quite hard going. [Ickworth] House is a Grade I listed building that was created in 1795 by the 4th Earl of Bristol. The main attraction for us was the rotunda building (pictured above), though I have to say – like many of the houses we have gone around I wasn’t so fussed. Elizabeth suggests that this is due to my dislike of being reminded that people have money. She is probably right. When we go around castles and such I can see there being a point to the building. I guess there is still the waste of wealth there too but I find it easy to reconcile than the grand Georgian and Victorian houses. Still I do enjoy taking photographs of the buildings and walking around the lovely and generally huge gardens ([Ickworth] is something like 1,800 acres!).
Before we headed to [Ickworth] we took a short walk around Bury St Edmunds, after I had my suit fitted. It turns out that Bury St Edmunds is known for brewing and malting (we even walked passed the Greene King brewery). The Abbey is quite spooky with many large structures still existing after it was mostly destroyed during the 16th century Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Abbey is now mostly a nice looking park and overall the town seemed really quite nice to me. I’d have loved going there as a child given you can really be surrounded by history that looks castle like (see above picture).
We manged to go on the day that there was a massive fire (well the night before) which [destroyed a 17th Century building]:
Oh and there was also a lovely but small rose garden so I had to take some photos:
More photographs can be found in my of the day.